Gunshy
by ion bond
Summary: He’s a fair shot for an ordinary. Always had been, still is. S2 Max's thoughts on Logan and guns. Gen.


Logan has no problem with firearms. I can't touch them.

Back when we were first getting to know each other, like that day he tried to give me a handgun as a gift, I used to think I could explain it to myself. Sure, a bullet fucked up his life, but what happened to him happened to _him_, and Logan is nothing if not selfless. He believes in the greater good.

But that was before the attack on Manticore. I know what it was like for him when they got me, don't even try and tell me I don't. The last thing I remember from the woods outside Gillette is seeing it in his eyes when he held me, heartshot.

I remember Eva, so I know what it should have meant to him to see me die.

Still. I watch him sometimes in T.C. when Command is quiet and he doesn't know I'm around. He disassembles his piece and cleans each of the components, going about the task as methodically and respectfully as he does everything else he thinks is important. No qualms, no bad memories, no visible emotion. All business. He has divorced himself from what those metal parts do.

It's not an act. Sometimes he even hums.

He reminds me of Alec at these times. I don't know who they made X5-494 hurt in the last decade of his tenure at Manticore, but Alec says he's all right. He laughs and flirts and acts like a dick and I wonder what he sees behind his eyelids when he gets the shakes. This is bent, maybe, but I want to believe they really trained him not to care.

No one trained Logan to do anything, but he learned, somehow, and if there's one thing I know from growing up with sisters and brothers, it's that everyone handles pain differently.

My Ninja is my baby. I think I started thinking like that because it seemed more civilian. Soldiers have equipment that's standard issue, interchangeable, but normal people love their individual possessions, right? As much as I like to tease Logan about being sentimental, he doesn't do that kind of thing. A gun is a tool to him, like the exo and the Aztek and and the computers he uses. It's crucial that he keep them all in good working order.

He's not going to win in a fistfight with most people anymore, but he's a fair shot for an ordinary. Always had been, still is.

That's probably part of it.

You couldn't convince me that Logan is over what happened, although maybe he's getting there. There was a time when he used to watch the hoverdrone footage of the shooting every day. I pretended I could not understand the impulse that made him do this, all the while grateful that there was no record of what happened to Eva. Because if I had it, I would watch it until the disc wore out. I would see myself standing to the side as she grabbed for the gun and fell, over and over.

I'm only guessing here, because I've never talked to Logan about this, but I don't think the worst part for him is seeing the moment that took away half his body. The worst part is the endless replay of the moments just before, whatever it was he thinks he did wrong. How he was slow or clumsy or let his guard down. How he was too human to stop what happened.

The worst part for me would be seeing what I didn't do. How I was not human enough.

But that's beside the point with us. Logan and me, no one saved us, but we made it through and now we do our best for those who still need saving. I do some things for him that he can't do, and I know that burns him, although he tries never to let me see.

He's good at things that I can't do, too. Making a soufflé. Calming down thirty angry people in a room with the sound of his voice or, as Eyes Only, mobilizing everyone in broadcast range. Laying down a cloth on the salvaged table, elbow to elbow with Alec and Mole, rubbing the cylinder and the inside of the frame with cleaning solvent, then threading the rod patiently down the barrel until it comes out clean, oiling all the moving parts. So calm, like the past has nothing to do with the present.

He has shot people, shot them to death. I watch his capable hands, or I walk up behind him to rub his shoulders, the muscles tense and warm beneath his shirt, and I think, _this is a killer_.

Everyone handles pain differently. Logan's been taken apart and put back together, just like me. I wonder how his mind works, now.

I'm glad I don't quite know.

FIN.


End file.
